How to create your own Easter Eggs with Siri, Alexa and Google

20. April 2019

Siri: What, no bunny costume this year?

Last year we successfully ducked compiling the endless list of Easter eggs, which are hidden inside Siri, Alexa, and Google. Rather than spoiling the Easter egg fun – which basically every other website sadly does – we tried to keep it fun and just helped a bit with your Easter egg hunt. This year, we are taking it to the next level: We’ll create our own Easter eggs with Siri, Alexa, and Google.

This will be much more creative and fun, than trying the pre-made humor crafted by Siri’s, Alexa’s and Google’s – admittedly talented – personality teams.

What’s an Easter Egg?

Let’s ask our whiz-kid: “Hey Google, what’s an easter egg?” (By the way, what we’ll hear is also the response to Google’s Easter Egg hunt question: “Give me an Easter Egg”. Google has not only not fixed the bug that we often get a Wikipedia definition, rather than our Easter eggs, but has also accomplished to make the Google Home Hub pretty much humorless.)

Google: “According to Wikipedia: In computer software and media, an Easter egg is an intentional inside joke, hidden message or image, or secret feature of a work. It is usually found in a computer program, video game, or DVD/Blu-ray Disc menu screen. The name is used to evoke the idea of a traditional Easter egg hunt.”

So, the idea with our smart assistant Easter eggs is – apart from hunting pre-made jokes, which we have covered in last years post – that we say or ask something and then get a fun, unexpected inside joke, hidden message, or … maybe a hint where we can find real Easter eggs.

Ok, with our own Easter eggs, we won’t be able to surprise ourselves, as we are the ones creating them. But we will definitely surprise kids, partner, family, and friends. It just depends on your creativity and a tiny bit of know-how.

How to create our own Easter Eggs?

It’s super easy! With Google’s and Alexa’s Routines, we can define a phrase, which will trigger a personalized, fun response which we’ve crafted ourselves and nobody will notice the difference. Siri is a bit of a killjoy, as she will give away that she is “running our shortcut” on a HomePod, but OK, we already know that she’s a bit too sirious.

Some ideas to get you started:

Use commands your surprised ones frequently use and personalize the response. If the phrase is something like “Mirror, mirror on the wall”, include the name of your kid in your custom response, she’ll be much happier.

Incorporate your Easter eggs in an actual egg hunt. “Where is my first Easter egg?” could trigger a hint “look around the stairs which lead up” or for old kids just play the song “Stairway to heaven”.

Prepare for follow up questions, “I can’t find my first Easter egg” could give more precise information, rather than the current suggestions by Google “Try checking a shoe or the mailbox” or Alexa “Possibly try behind the sofa? You never know what you may find.” You can customize all of this, it’s your game!

Use their favorite songs. “Play Baby Shark” could respond “Oh, <kids name>. An easter egg is hidden …” and then play the song, don’t make them grumpy.

Trigger some indoor/outdoor smart lights to turn on/off or use colors as indicators. Off or blue could mean “cold”, no easter egg here. On or red could mean “hot”, your Easter egg is nearby.

Be creative and combine as many hints as your assistant supports. You can use custom responses, YouTube clips, songs, smart home devices, etc. (Note, location services are currently not accurate enough for this game)

Conclusion

Funnily enough, with this Easter egg post, we have not only looked into how we can create our own Easter eggs, a custom response to whichever command we say, but we have also caught a glimpse of smart home and music automation. Yes, you can use this knowledge not only for fun, but also to create helpful daily routines with Siri, Alexa, and Google around your home.

And, just in case someone in your household drives you crazy by always listening to the same song, you know what to do! Create an Easter egg which plays your favorite song instead. And in case it’s their special day, make sure you create special responses because you know much better than Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet what they like.

A quick personal ranking, derived from how much work is needed to create our own Easter eggs with Siri, Alexa, and Google:

Alexa, you are still egg-cellent!

Google, not too far behind! There’s this “Give me an Easter Egg” bug waiting to be fixed since last year, now also on the Google Home Hub! Can you please fix this until tomorrow? And can we please disable routines (quick fix) and have a more intuitive user interface (in 2-3 years, maybe?)

Siri, you are spoiling every custom Easter egg with your: “Running your shortcut …”. And if your Shortcut, music and HomeKit interoperability doesn’t evolve soon (like WWDC19, maybe?), we will be really, really sad.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this custom Easter egg, prank, and home automation post. If you have any questions or funny ideas for custom Easter eggs, please share them in the comment section below.

Parents, if your Siri, Alexa, and Google are acting strange lately, you’ve found the source. We are sorry, but we love the fun, join in!